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Here in the U.S., at least, what has widely been maligned as "COVID denialism" was actually a deeper and more nuanced conversation about whether sudden, sweepin

by danhak 4y ago

Here in the U.S., at least, what has widely been maligned as "COVID denialism" was actually a deeper and more nuanced conversation about whether sudden, sweeping changes to society would prevent more harm than they cause. And now looking at outcomes across different states (e.g. Florida vs. California)--and considering ALL outcomes (public health, homelessness, unemployment, substance abuse, mental health, truancy, graduation rates, violent crime)--it's indeed unclear that draconian policies in the name of public health were a net positive. I am extremely concerned about climate change. But there seems to be little introspection from those who propose sweeping policy change about the need to consider second-order effects on those whose lives and livelihoods will be upturned. The general disdain for people in places like West Virginia gives me little hope that will change.

jacquesm 4y ago
Nature really doesn't care about our feelings. All that whining is something that my grandmothers' generation would have scoffed at: you have it relatively easy, stop complaining. 5 years of war, occupation, hunger and brutal death is the kind of thing that generation lived through - or not, in many cases - and they came through to rebuild their world without bitching about it. COVID was - compared to that, sorry - a walk in the park and we should have shouldered it collectively and dealt with it. Instead we ended up with a large fraction simply denying objective reality in the hope that it would go away. That's not how you deal with problems as an adult. In toddlers I find that acceptable, but not in grown ups. And the ease with which demagogues used it to bend people to their will shows clearly that we have not learned anything from the very recent past, which in a way is even more worrying: apparently we are structurally incapable of retaining very hard won knowledge over a stretch longer than a human life-span leading to endless repeats. But this time, with climate change, the stakes are a lot higher than 'the usual' price of a few million people dead, we're talking about changes on a scale that humanity has never had to deal with before. So if we aren't going to get our act together the next 100 years or so will not at all be pleasant, to put it very mildly, and going on the assumption that it isn't way too late already.
- danhak 4y ago
  You don't seem to be engaging with the main point here: there were places that DID take COVID seriously--that shut down overnight, paid the price of mass unemployment, homelessness and growing tent cities, increasing substance abuse / overdose, loss of education that will never be recovered and countless other second-order effects. And those places did not emerge with a significantly better COVID outcome. Without an answer for addressing the second-order effects of green policy, there will be no consensus.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Those places would have come out better if we all did this. And that's the whole problem: if you don't tackle problems of this magnitude globally then you might as well not bother because a couple of dissidents on a large enough scale will ruin it for everybody else. In this case the dissidents even use this argument to show that the better choices didn't work... which when you think about it is really despicable.
    - GolfPopper 4y ago
      Not to mention, the US by and large collectively avoided worst case outcomes (hospital system too overloaded to provide treatment to majority of cases) because enough people did take COVID seriously. And that's before getting into how hindsight is 20/20 (in addition to being rosy). the neo-Black Death will be really happy, if, a month into the next pandemic the going line is, "well, the last one probably wasn't as bad as the worst case scenario, so let's assume this one will be fine and do nothing."
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        Yes, that is a risk. In a way we already had that because of how SARS-1 ended up being not nearly as bad as was predicted initially thanks to some absolutely amazing international coordination. Unfortunately COVID was a lot nastier.
    - prometheus76 4y ago
mberning 4y ago
There is a great hubris at play. Man is so foolish.
hgomersall 4y ago
The problem is not specific to people that want to stop climate change. The general disdain for people in places like Western Virginia can be attributed to the dominance of neoliberal philosophy (insofar as it can be described as a philosophy). My experience is that the most vocal proponents of proper strategies to address climate change are also the most vocal supporters of social justice.
pavlov 4y ago
“Sweeping” seems to be a favorite adjective of those who have moved into the “it’s too late to do anything anyway” stage. As Doctorow writes, the policy changes didn’t have to be sweeping if we’d started in 1977. But we didn’t. Now all the remaining options will upturn someone’s lives. It’s just a question of balancing the effects to achieve something better than the current path which means sweeping catastrophe for our children.
voganmother42 4y ago
Nuanced is an interesting way to describe what happened - especially with a description like draconian! The disdain is for ignoring the science, the health of other people, and negative externalities… it is not likely to change, nor are the minds of those who are dug in and feel as though their entitlement to the status quo will outdo entropy. The anchor is sad about being dragged?
- haswell 4y ago
  > The anchor is sad about being dragged? This, to me, summarizes the problem. Comparing an entire group of people to a heavy metal object at the bottom of the sea. It’s a tempting dismissal, sure, but will never help someone stuck in their ideology see beyond it. > nor are the minds of those who are dug in And is it any wonder that those minds will not change when we hold nothing but disdain and shout at each other? I am convinced that we will not solve these issues without focusing on the tribalism and identity politics that sit at the core of it all. I don’t see an anchor being dragged. I see people who see their way of life threatened, and are willing to fight against that. This doesn’t excuse the behavior, or make it valid. But it’s also not terribly surprising when you look at how conversations about this across ideologies usually go.
  - voganmother42 4y ago
    “I don’t see an anchor being dragged. I see people who see their way of life threatened, and are willing to fight against that.” Fighting against what? Change? The science that says its not sustainable? Young people who want a future? Way of life? As the anchor analogy was a joke, arresting progress and getting dragged, (made fun of)… this feels like a joke, but anything can be your way of life if you are stubborn enough and willing to make it your identity I guess? “Yeah you’ve got ghosts in your blood, better do cocaine about it!” - Old timey doctor whose way of life is threatened
    - haswell 4y ago
      > Fighting against what? Change? Yes, exactly. It's no more complicated than that. Change is hard, and we need to acknowledge that. When its change you deeply believe in, it's not so hard. But when that change is framed as a set of "for" and "against" political ideologies, with little interest from either side in having an honest conversation, now that change looks like one political party imposing their will on the other. People are hardwired to be loyal to their tribe, and when these issues manifest as Tribe A vs. Tribe B, it's little wonder that they fight against it at what seems to be an almost unconscious level. I don't think this can change until we start having different kinds of conversations with each other. The current shouting, name calling, derision, etc. only deepen that divide, and ultimately it doesn't matter if the subject is climate change or inequality or abortion rights, we're in an era where almost no one is willing to have an open conversation, with genuine interest in hearing the other side. Because of this, all each side sees is a caricature of the other, unable to see what's really there. I'm about as liberal as one can be, and I find myself incredibly frustrated at how "my party" engages. > anything can be your way of life if you are stubborn enough and willing to make it your identity I guess? Look at the state of modern discourse. Almost everyone is tying their identity to a myriad of things. This is relatively new. Political party is just one. By definition, political changes that impact attributes of one's identity are now perceived as existential threats, because identity is about as existential as it gets. > “Yeah you’ve got ghosts in your blood, better do cocaine about it!” - Old timey doctor whose way of life is threatened This is a pretty disingenuous example when there are real/current issues that we could examine instead. I think one need only look at the pandemic and how it unfolded. Was I incredibly frustrated at conservatives for their selfish behavior and denialism? 100 times yes. But it seems clear to me that much of that behavior was precipitated/exacerbated by the attitudes of liberals, who shamed, shunned, yelled and screamed at those who disagree (behaviors which seem antithetical to liberalism...). And what was everyone screaming/yelling about? Telling people that they could no longer live their lives. No longer see their friend groups, etc. You can argue that this isn't what it was about, but if you come from a position that suspects the premise of the argument is incorrect, the only thing you can look at is the outcome of the argument, which in this case directly impacted everyone's ability to live their lives freely. "But it was for the greater good and they're just selfish and don't give a shit about other people" is what many of my liberal friends would counter with. And I agree it was for the greater good (which is why I was extremely conscientious about my own behaviors throughout that time), but the trouble is that the dialog got stuck at the screaming/shouting phase. That this resulted in a similar response and backlash hardly seems surprising. If the pandemic was a dress rehearsal for how we tackle world-wide existential problems, we need to be going back to the drawing board, and fast.
aidenn0 4y ago
Two examples of what I (in the US) decry as "COVID denialism" both are people known personally to me (extended family actually). These are from mid 2020. Both people eventually pivoted to "being opposed to draconian policies" 1: The numbers coming out of NYC are grossly exaggerated; probably only about 1/10th of those reported as "dying of COVID" actually died of COVID. Other people died from different causes but just happened to test positive for COVID. 2: A dialog between person A and person B: A: If only 1% of people who get COVID die from it why are we still worried? B: At a 1% fatality rate if half the population of the US gets COVID, that's over a million dead A: Unlike you I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid
- jacquesm 4y ago
  The mistake in your reasoning is to believe that the fatality rate is the only thing that matters. But fortunately with climate change it is that easy: you or your descendants will either die or you won't, and hopefully there will be a recognizable society left for the survivors. Enjoy the ride and make sure to snap pictures.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    Of course fatality rate isn't the only thing that matters; however I was giving an example of one person claiming that fatalities (not fatality rate) were overstated by an order of magnitude, and another person claiming -- I'm not sure what -- that multiplication is wrong. These are both denialism, even with the common ground that 1M dead Americans is a bad outcome.
simonh 4y ago
The differences in policies were heavily hyped, but if you look at overall policy and people's actual individual behaviour both Florida and California went through pretty stringent lockdowns. In practice a lot of work places enforced social distancing, masks, pushed vaccines. The two states certainly had much more similar public behaviour and policies with each other than either had with some other countries like Ecuador or Brazil. Another difference that gets hyped up a lot is Sweden versus many other European countries. Sweden was famous for "not locking down", but in fact it did pretty heavily in the grand scheme of things. It just did it a bit later than many other countries. Take a look at the stringency index in this article. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-07/california-versus-florida-a-covid-reckoning https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-07/califo... Florida locked down just as fast and just as hard as California for the first 6 months of the pandemic. After that stringency measures diverged, but Florida still maintained a range of significant pandemic control measures. Their measures in early 2021 were about as strict as California's in late 2021. Overall they were more similar than different. It also seems that the high number of elderly people in Florida, as a group, took the pandemic very seriously. They were in fact more likely to get themselves vaccinated than elderly people in California, despite the lack of mandates. In the end it's actual behaviour of the population that makes the difference, whether that behaviour was mandated or not. One interesting stat is that in the most pro-Trump counties (60%+ support) death rates were 2.7x higher than in the most Pro-Biden counties. In the top 10% of counties for each camp the death rate differential was 6x. At the peak of the wave in 2021 about a thousand more Republicans were dying per day than Democrats.
- atweiden 4y ago
  > both Florida and California went through pretty stringent lockdowns In Australia, police would patrol the streets to ensure people were staying within a 5 km radius of their residence, and to ensure they were only out for a reason deemed essential by the government. This was accompanied by international, interstate and intrastate border closures, i.e. you couldn’t enter Australia, and couldn’t enter another state within Australia if already in Australia, nor could you in some cases even drive from one part of the state to another, without a special exemption. I hesitate to ask what Florida did to enforce the lockdowns, because I’m fairly certain what passed for a “lockdown” outside of Asia-Pacific was a joke by comparison. I strongly doubt any of the above measures were done by any state in the US at any point in the pandemic.
ptero 4y ago
This. I cannot upvote this enough. Many people advocating for drastic measures (which may be necessary) are in a war. Casualties to be expected, those who are not on our side are enemies to be dealt with as the war times require (this is also the theme of the original article: let's grab the wheel and swerve, and if the bus rolls, well, too bad). That is a possible approach, but once you start on that path there is no more negotiation. Only the force, us vs them. Then most folks on the sidelines who are somewhat supportive but not thrilled about swerving of the bus they ride in become active adversaries. I would not underestimate that factor. My 2c.
aeturnum 4y ago
> there seems to be little introspection from those who propose sweeping policy change about the need to consider second-order effects on those whose lives and livelihoods will be upturned I really encourage you to read more deeply on this, as I think you're painting climate advocates with the same broad brush you decry others for using. It is extremely common for climate people to insist that a just transition is the only transition worth making - which includes both gigantic structural changes around how we interact with the climate & also structural changes to society to change the material conditions of marginalized & adversely impacted groups. These recommendations are included in basically every climate change document produced by international efforts. The inclusion of these considerations is also routinely mocked by US conservatives. Lots of people think that "climate is about climate" and the inclusion of social safety net reforms or serious retraining is a bad-faith inclusion from the left who are just using climate change as a cudgel. If you're interested in a pretty up to date holistic (though to the left of many of the IPCC recs) take on climate recommendations, I would point you at the latest season of scene on radio[1]. It links together the chain of reasoning about why it is essential to address climate with other sources of marginalization and victimization. The understanding of "what climate change activists want" that you're taking about in your post is frequently brought up by people who would like to obstruct action. [1] http://www.sceneonradio.org/the-repair/ http://www.sceneonradio.org/the-repair/
jfjrkkskdik 4y ago
The thing is is the rest of us have free agency to optimize and adapt to our conditions. I don’t actually owe giving up my agency to do so in deference to people thousands of miles away, whose lack of movement away from toxic industry is instigating the agency I have to take in the first place. Stow your bucolic imagery of simple WVians. Those simpletons are having a dramatic impact on my life. Yet it’s unconscionable if I push back? That’s a lopsided, abusive scenario. The people of WV do not rule the world. The proud people of WV need to take their advice and pull themselves up by their boot straps; looks like they benefit from big government communism, to me: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700 https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the...
bsder 4y ago
> Here in the U.S., at least, what has widely been maligned as "COVID denialism" was actually a deeper and more nuanced conversation about whether sudden, sweeping changes to society would prevent more harm than they cause. Sorry, but that's historical revisionism, and I'm not going to let you get away with it. "Covid is a liberal hoax" was the starting point in the US. That was neither nuanced nor deep. That was pure denialism. > it's indeed unclear that draconian policies in the name of public health were a net positive. I believe that the data we have from Sweden vs other Nordic countries (which did real lockdowns) contradicts that narrative. Both Norway and Denmark have around half the deaths normalized per capita of Sweden (Denmark a little above--Norway a little below half).
analog31 4y ago
>>>> But there seems to be little introspection from those who propose sweeping policy change about the need to consider second-order effects on those whose lives and livelihoods will be upturned. That seems like basic conservatism, which has been systematically forced to the sidelines over the past 50 years. I love the people of West Virginia, but it keeps getting harder and harder to pretend that they don't vote their beliefs.
atweiden 4y ago
> Here in the U.S., at least, what has widely been maligned as "COVID denialism" was actually a deeper and more nuanced conversation about whether sudden, sweeping changes to society would prevent more harm than they cause. > And now looking at outcomes across different states (e.g. Florida vs. California)--and considering ALL outcomes (public health, homelessness, unemployment, substance abuse, mental health, truancy, graduation rates, violent crime)--it's indeed unclear that draconian policies in the name of public health were a net positive. Why are we drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of Covid safety protocols based on the failed half-measures taken by America? We have a plethora of working examples to study from the Asia-Pacific region: Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and China all eradicated Covid pre-Omicron. > But there seems to be little introspection from those who propose sweeping policy change about the need to consider second-order effects on those whose lives and livelihoods will be upturned. Equally, there seems to be little introspection amongst American libertarians about the role their own society’s dysfunction might be playing in shaping their personal beliefs.

by danhak 4y ago

jacquesm 4y ago

Nature really doesn't care about our feelings. All that whining is something that my grandmothers' generation would have scoffed at: you have it relatively easy, stop complaining. 5 years of war, occupation, hunger and brutal death is the kind of thing that generation lived through - or not, in many cases - and they came through to rebuild their world without bitching about it. COVID was - compared to that, sorry - a walk in the park and we should have shouldered it collectively and dealt with it. Instead we ended up with a large fraction simply denying objective reality in the hope that it would go away. That's not how you deal with problems as an adult. In toddlers I find that acceptable, but not in grown ups. And the ease with which demagogues used it to bend people to their will shows clearly that we have not learned anything from the very recent past, which in a way is even more worrying: apparently we are structurally incapable of retaining very hard won knowledge over a stretch longer than a human life-span leading to endless repeats. But this time, with climate change, the stakes are a lot higher than 'the usual' price of a few million people dead, we're talking about changes on a scale that humanity has never had to deal with before. So if we aren't going to get our act together the next 100 years or so will not at all be pleasant, to put it very mildly, and going on the assumption that it isn't way too late already.

danhak 4y ago
You don't seem to be engaging with the main point here: there were places that DID take COVID seriously--that shut down overnight, paid the price of mass unemployment, homelessness and growing tent cities, increasing substance abuse / overdose, loss of education that will never be recovered and countless other second-order effects. And those places did not emerge with a significantly better COVID outcome. Without an answer for addressing the second-order effects of green policy, there will be no consensus.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Those places would have come out better if we all did this. And that's the whole problem: if you don't tackle problems of this magnitude globally then you might as well not bother because a couple of dissidents on a large enough scale will ruin it for everybody else. In this case the dissidents even use this argument to show that the better choices didn't work... which when you think about it is really despicable.
  - GolfPopper 4y ago
    Not to mention, the US by and large collectively avoided worst case outcomes (hospital system too overloaded to provide treatment to majority of cases) because enough people did take COVID seriously. And that's before getting into how hindsight is 20/20 (in addition to being rosy). the neo-Black Death will be really happy, if, a month into the next pandemic the going line is, "well, the last one probably wasn't as bad as the worst case scenario, so let's assume this one will be fine and do nothing."
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Yes, that is a risk. In a way we already had that because of how SARS-1 ended up being not nearly as bad as was predicted initially thanks to some absolutely amazing international coordination. Unfortunately COVID was a lot nastier.
  - prometheus76 4y ago

mberning 4y ago

There is a great hubris at play. Man is so foolish.

hgomersall 4y ago

The problem is not specific to people that want to stop climate change. The general disdain for people in places like Western Virginia can be attributed to the dominance of neoliberal philosophy (insofar as it can be described as a philosophy). My experience is that the most vocal proponents of proper strategies to address climate change are also the most vocal supporters of social justice.

pavlov 4y ago

“Sweeping” seems to be a favorite adjective of those who have moved into the “it’s too late to do anything anyway” stage. As Doctorow writes, the policy changes didn’t have to be sweeping if we’d started in 1977. But we didn’t. Now all the remaining options will upturn someone’s lives. It’s just a question of balancing the effects to achieve something better than the current path which means sweeping catastrophe for our children.

voganmother42 4y ago

Nuanced is an interesting way to describe what happened - especially with a description like draconian! The disdain is for ignoring the science, the health of other people, and negative externalities… it is not likely to change, nor are the minds of those who are dug in and feel as though their entitlement to the status quo will outdo entropy. The anchor is sad about being dragged?

haswell 4y ago
> The anchor is sad about being dragged? This, to me, summarizes the problem. Comparing an entire group of people to a heavy metal object at the bottom of the sea. It’s a tempting dismissal, sure, but will never help someone stuck in their ideology see beyond it. > nor are the minds of those who are dug in And is it any wonder that those minds will not change when we hold nothing but disdain and shout at each other? I am convinced that we will not solve these issues without focusing on the tribalism and identity politics that sit at the core of it all. I don’t see an anchor being dragged. I see people who see their way of life threatened, and are willing to fight against that. This doesn’t excuse the behavior, or make it valid. But it’s also not terribly surprising when you look at how conversations about this across ideologies usually go.
- voganmother42 4y ago
  “I don’t see an anchor being dragged. I see people who see their way of life threatened, and are willing to fight against that.” Fighting against what? Change? The science that says its not sustainable? Young people who want a future? Way of life? As the anchor analogy was a joke, arresting progress and getting dragged, (made fun of)… this feels like a joke, but anything can be your way of life if you are stubborn enough and willing to make it your identity I guess? “Yeah you’ve got ghosts in your blood, better do cocaine about it!” - Old timey doctor whose way of life is threatened
  - haswell 4y ago
    > Fighting against what? Change? Yes, exactly. It's no more complicated than that. Change is hard, and we need to acknowledge that. When its change you deeply believe in, it's not so hard. But when that change is framed as a set of "for" and "against" political ideologies, with little interest from either side in having an honest conversation, now that change looks like one political party imposing their will on the other. People are hardwired to be loyal to their tribe, and when these issues manifest as Tribe A vs. Tribe B, it's little wonder that they fight against it at what seems to be an almost unconscious level. I don't think this can change until we start having different kinds of conversations with each other. The current shouting, name calling, derision, etc. only deepen that divide, and ultimately it doesn't matter if the subject is climate change or inequality or abortion rights, we're in an era where almost no one is willing to have an open conversation, with genuine interest in hearing the other side. Because of this, all each side sees is a caricature of the other, unable to see what's really there. I'm about as liberal as one can be, and I find myself incredibly frustrated at how "my party" engages. > anything can be your way of life if you are stubborn enough and willing to make it your identity I guess? Look at the state of modern discourse. Almost everyone is tying their identity to a myriad of things. This is relatively new. Political party is just one. By definition, political changes that impact attributes of one's identity are now perceived as existential threats, because identity is about as existential as it gets. > “Yeah you’ve got ghosts in your blood, better do cocaine about it!” - Old timey doctor whose way of life is threatened This is a pretty disingenuous example when there are real/current issues that we could examine instead. I think one need only look at the pandemic and how it unfolded. Was I incredibly frustrated at conservatives for their selfish behavior and denialism? 100 times yes. But it seems clear to me that much of that behavior was precipitated/exacerbated by the attitudes of liberals, who shamed, shunned, yelled and screamed at those who disagree (behaviors which seem antithetical to liberalism...). And what was everyone screaming/yelling about? Telling people that they could no longer live their lives. No longer see their friend groups, etc. You can argue that this isn't what it was about, but if you come from a position that suspects the premise of the argument is incorrect, the only thing you can look at is the outcome of the argument, which in this case directly impacted everyone's ability to live their lives freely. "But it was for the greater good and they're just selfish and don't give a shit about other people" is what many of my liberal friends would counter with. And I agree it was for the greater good (which is why I was extremely conscientious about my own behaviors throughout that time), but the trouble is that the dialog got stuck at the screaming/shouting phase. That this resulted in a similar response and backlash hardly seems surprising. If the pandemic was a dress rehearsal for how we tackle world-wide existential problems, we need to be going back to the drawing board, and fast.

aidenn0 4y ago

Two examples of what I (in the US) decry as "COVID denialism" both are people known personally to me (extended family actually). These are from mid 2020. Both people eventually pivoted to "being opposed to draconian policies" 1: The numbers coming out of NYC are grossly exaggerated; probably only about 1/10th of those reported as "dying of COVID" actually died of COVID. Other people died from different causes but just happened to test positive for COVID. 2: A dialog between person A and person B: A: If only 1% of people who get COVID die from it why are we still worried? B: At a 1% fatality rate if half the population of the US gets COVID, that's over a million dead A: Unlike you I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid

jacquesm 4y ago
The mistake in your reasoning is to believe that the fatality rate is the only thing that matters. But fortunately with climate change it is that easy: you or your descendants will either die or you won't, and hopefully there will be a recognizable society left for the survivors. Enjoy the ride and make sure to snap pictures.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Of course fatality rate isn't the only thing that matters; however I was giving an example of one person claiming that fatalities (not fatality rate) were overstated by an order of magnitude, and another person claiming -- I'm not sure what -- that multiplication is wrong. These are both denialism, even with the common ground that 1M dead Americans is a bad outcome.

simonh 4y ago

The differences in policies were heavily hyped, but if you look at overall policy and people's actual individual behaviour both Florida and California went through pretty stringent lockdowns. In practice a lot of work places enforced social distancing, masks, pushed vaccines. The two states certainly had much more similar public behaviour and policies with each other than either had with some other countries like Ecuador or Brazil. Another difference that gets hyped up a lot is Sweden versus many other European countries. Sweden was famous for "not locking down", but in fact it did pretty heavily in the grand scheme of things. It just did it a bit later than many other countries. Take a look at the stringency index in this article. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-07/california-versus-florida-a-covid-reckoning https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-07/califo... Florida locked down just as fast and just as hard as California for the first 6 months of the pandemic. After that stringency measures diverged, but Florida still maintained a range of significant pandemic control measures. Their measures in early 2021 were about as strict as California's in late 2021. Overall they were more similar than different. It also seems that the high number of elderly people in Florida, as a group, took the pandemic very seriously. They were in fact more likely to get themselves vaccinated than elderly people in California, despite the lack of mandates. In the end it's actual behaviour of the population that makes the difference, whether that behaviour was mandated or not. One interesting stat is that in the most pro-Trump counties (60%+ support) death rates were 2.7x higher than in the most Pro-Biden counties. In the top 10% of counties for each camp the death rate differential was 6x. At the peak of the wave in 2021 about a thousand more Republicans were dying per day than Democrats.

atweiden 4y ago
> both Florida and California went through pretty stringent lockdowns In Australia, police would patrol the streets to ensure people were staying within a 5 km radius of their residence, and to ensure they were only out for a reason deemed essential by the government. This was accompanied by international, interstate and intrastate border closures, i.e. you couldn’t enter Australia, and couldn’t enter another state within Australia if already in Australia, nor could you in some cases even drive from one part of the state to another, without a special exemption. I hesitate to ask what Florida did to enforce the lockdowns, because I’m fairly certain what passed for a “lockdown” outside of Asia-Pacific was a joke by comparison. I strongly doubt any of the above measures were done by any state in the US at any point in the pandemic.

ptero 4y ago

This. I cannot upvote this enough. Many people advocating for drastic measures (which may be necessary) are in a war. Casualties to be expected, those who are not on our side are enemies to be dealt with as the war times require (this is also the theme of the original article: let's grab the wheel and swerve, and if the bus rolls, well, too bad). That is a possible approach, but once you start on that path there is no more negotiation. Only the force, us vs them. Then most folks on the sidelines who are somewhat supportive but not thrilled about swerving of the bus they ride in become active adversaries. I would not underestimate that factor. My 2c.

aeturnum 4y ago

> there seems to be little introspection from those who propose sweeping policy change about the need to consider second-order effects on those whose lives and livelihoods will be upturned I really encourage you to read more deeply on this, as I think you're painting climate advocates with the same broad brush you decry others for using. It is extremely common for climate people to insist that a just transition is the only transition worth making - which includes both gigantic structural changes around how we interact with the climate & also structural changes to society to change the material conditions of marginalized & adversely impacted groups. These recommendations are included in basically every climate change document produced by international efforts. The inclusion of these considerations is also routinely mocked by US conservatives. Lots of people think that "climate is about climate" and the inclusion of social safety net reforms or serious retraining is a bad-faith inclusion from the left who are just using climate change as a cudgel. If you're interested in a pretty up to date holistic (though to the left of many of the IPCC recs) take on climate recommendations, I would point you at the latest season of scene on radio[1]. It links together the chain of reasoning about why it is essential to address climate with other sources of marginalization and victimization. The understanding of "what climate change activists want" that you're taking about in your post is frequently brought up by people who would like to obstruct action. [1] http://www.sceneonradio.org/the-repair/ http://www.sceneonradio.org/the-repair/

jfjrkkskdik 4y ago

The thing is is the rest of us have free agency to optimize and adapt to our conditions. I don’t actually owe giving up my agency to do so in deference to people thousands of miles away, whose lack of movement away from toxic industry is instigating the agency I have to take in the first place. Stow your bucolic imagery of simple WVians. Those simpletons are having a dramatic impact on my life. Yet it’s unconscionable if I push back? That’s a lopsided, abusive scenario. The people of WV do not rule the world. The proud people of WV need to take their advice and pull themselves up by their boot straps; looks like they benefit from big government communism, to me: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700 https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the...

bsder 4y ago

> Here in the U.S., at least, what has widely been maligned as "COVID denialism" was actually a deeper and more nuanced conversation about whether sudden, sweeping changes to society would prevent more harm than they cause. Sorry, but that's historical revisionism, and I'm not going to let you get away with it. "Covid is a liberal hoax" was the starting point in the US. That was neither nuanced nor deep. That was pure denialism. > it's indeed unclear that draconian policies in the name of public health were a net positive. I believe that the data we have from Sweden vs other Nordic countries (which did real lockdowns) contradicts that narrative. Both Norway and Denmark have around half the deaths normalized per capita of Sweden (Denmark a little above--Norway a little below half).

analog31 4y ago

>>>> But there seems to be little introspection from those who propose sweeping policy change about the need to consider second-order effects on those whose lives and livelihoods will be upturned. That seems like basic conservatism, which has been systematically forced to the sidelines over the past 50 years. I love the people of West Virginia, but it keeps getting harder and harder to pretend that they don't vote their beliefs.

atweiden 4y ago

> Here in the U.S., at least, what has widely been maligned as "COVID denialism" was actually a deeper and more nuanced conversation about whether sudden, sweeping changes to society would prevent more harm than they cause. > And now looking at outcomes across different states (e.g. Florida vs. California)--and considering ALL outcomes (public health, homelessness, unemployment, substance abuse, mental health, truancy, graduation rates, violent crime)--it's indeed unclear that draconian policies in the name of public health were a net positive. Why are we drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of Covid safety protocols based on the failed half-measures taken by America? We have a plethora of working examples to study from the Asia-Pacific region: Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and China all eradicated Covid pre-Omicron. > But there seems to be little introspection from those who propose sweeping policy change about the need to consider second-order effects on those whose lives and livelihoods will be upturned. Equally, there seems to be little introspection amongst American libertarians about the role their own society’s dysfunction might be playing in shaping their personal beliefs.